Which is what makes attacking ANY game fairly easy, and defending them hard — by their very nature, games are not the most productive way to spend one’s time. But a) life would be boring without them, and b) some are more productive than others.

Thanks for your valuable comment, may I ask you a further assessment .
In your opinion what is the cost/benefit ratio of gaining an edge in executive skills via MMORPG for the individual himself (not considering the economic/corporate gain), i.e. how much extra benefit for the individual.
I reckon that in cases of hit or miss it can be critical, but what about averages?
I suspect a diminishing return here…

To put it bluntly — outside of business schools and military academies, MMORPG’s are the best tool invented for learning executive skills. There is simply nothing else in life of a child or a teenager, or of many adults, where you need to do THAT much planning, goal setting, prioritizing, and resource allocation — and cooperation with other people, who often have conflicting agendas. It is very social indeed.

When I do a job interview, if I have two otherwise identical candidates, one a chess master, the other has completed Dungeons & Dragons Online Vault of Night on epic setting — I will pick the latter. Both demonstrate equal amount of patience, dedication, and tactical skills, but the latter also has heap of executive skills — and demonstrable ability to work with other people. And I am a Russian, and had been playing chess since kindergarten.

So, may be you should not be speaking of retardation…

U jelly. Trolls.

Imagine a game called “EmptyQuest,” where you kill the dragon and rescue the princess only to be told by the King her Royal Father that different people have varied views on what constitutes valor, all of which are to be respected, and therefore out of a concern not to offend the Society for the Protection of Dragons or the Critical Princessology scholars, his Royal Highness is enjoined from rendering judgment on the nobility of the act and no medal ceremony is envisioned at this time, let alone marriage. Meanwhile, the priest of the Sinners-Burn-In-Hell Temple tells you that it couldn’t have been a noble act because you didn’t read from the proper scroll when you cursed the dragon.

Games are world-changing nevertheless, for instance they provide funding for microchips design and production, neither the industry not the military would have given us the mass production of high performance cheap electronics.
May be it will also end up boosting AI via the demand for more realistic responses from the games.

@Ryan
but I imagine something much more physically intensive than that

Almost there…

Neil Postman wrote an interesting book called “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. The basic idea was that the medium used determines the context, and consequently, the content of the message. Also, the medium changes how you think, and how you interact.

Anyone that’s read a book, verses seen the movie adaptation understands this. Reading an auto-biography isn’t the same as watching the hour special on the history channel.

I see games in much this same way.

I’ve easily put 10,000 hours into gaming. Young and in the ghetto, my parents bought me a NES and told me stay inside. You name it I’ve played it. Those hours did entertain me, and keep me safe, but came at the cost of socialization. Ten years later at age 20 and still a virgin, I realized I was alone with online friends, online games. I worked hard and now seven years later I’m married at going to school for computer networking. I’m a strange hybrid social geek, with few friends. My class is 99% male, and I’m in the 85% percentile among my group for social skills.

My classes meet in silence. There is group pressure to stay quiet, to make it less painful. IN agreement we stare at our desks. This is what you get when you live in a digital reality. Some of my classes force group work. This is the only real world interaction some of these people get. They desperately need it.

Many attempts to make friends go something like this.

“Do you play Team Fortress 2″? Oh, …
“Do you play World of Warcraft? What server?” Oh, …
“Have you played game X?” Oh, ….

The …. means trails into silence as the other person contemplates gaining the next level, or getting a new item, or buying a new game. We are rats pressing buttons for drugs. You put a rat next to the right button, it will even stop eating.

Sadly, sometimes a prerequisite to being friends is playing the same games. Being friends simply means playing the same games.

Story time
—————-
Online games routinely match up random strangers in a cooperative setting. League of Legends is a 5 v 5 player game that does just that. Like basketball, you need all 5 players cooperating to win, but unlike basketball, you will never see these player after the game. This quirk as a nightmarish side effect, a bad player, or someone ‘off their game’ is treated to the worst kind of name calling imaginable. People have become TV dinners. All the social cues that would act to keep some civility are removed, and people turn into animals. The process of becoming progressively more hostile until all control and civility is removed is called RAGE.

My friend, who I did hang out with in the real world, that I did meet at the above mentioned school, was this kind of player. He would rage online, typing the cruelest obscenities to people imaginable. It was humiliating to play with him, but I had to be his friend. I told him that I didn’t want to play with him if he RAGED, and he controlled it for quite a while.

I should have figured, as it was only a matter of time before he did the same thing to me, only in the real world, and somewhat muted. We always had these pointless arguments. The last time we got into an argument he said he was tired of me, and it was over. It was the middle of winter and my car battery was dead. Did he come outside to help me jump my car? No. Did we ever have a meaningful conversation? No. Who called every time to set up the get together? Me.

—————–

I feel like making games “world-changing” is like mixing aspirin into dog food. When the dog finds out, it won’t eat it.

I relate to this comment in the workplace. Getting cooperation and coordination on projects/work is much easier if you have a connection with the individuals involved. Some prior contact is much better than simply forming transactional relationships on the fly.

The problem is the transactional relationship itself–’this person only cares about me for as long as they want something’. No one wants to be used, and putting all relationships on a quid pro quo standing fosters feelings of being a disposable human being. Maybe not to yourself, but to the other person.

How do you know traffic is being regulated unless it is being regulated badly? Government and religious hegemonies arise from failure and crisis not success and contentment. The donkey must be driven to pull.

21st century failure of SOP policy has two origins. First, one manufactured incurable crisis was the deserving and the diverse. One does not pull a wagon by having jack****s ride it. Second, means became end. Crises no longer justify gainful efforts (e.g., European infantry enagements limiting supply of unemployable young males). Crisis has gone Ouroboros (Homeland Severity, FEMA, HHS, Department of Education). There is burgeoning process but no gainful product. Crisis has positive feedbacked out of control.

Gamers know the answer here, too – the software crashes.